After decades of inaction, state lawmakers see reforms for certain day cares as vital to keeping children safe

9:48 PM,
Mar. 8, 2014

Juan Cardenas visits the grave of his son, Carlos, last year.

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Two years after Juan Cardenas buried his little boy, the pain hasn't eased, the questions remain unanswered and - even with his wife expecting another child soon - the joy of a new birth has been slow to build.

"It's like walking with a knife in your heart," he said. "I have to live with that."

Cardenas's son died in a church day care that - like hundreds of day cares run from homes and ministries around Indiana - was largely beyond the realm of state oversight. The boy, just 22 months old, wandered off from caregivers who forgot about him for more than an hour. They found him later, floating dead in a ...